By Wendell Barnhouse | wendell@big12sports.com
Big 12 Sports.com Correspondent
Cost containment issues plus the Mountain West Conference's college football playoff proposal topped the agenda items during the Big 12 Conference's Board of Directors meeting on Friday, June 26.
The CEOs of the Big 12 member schools were supportive of two of the four national cost containment initiatives that will be placed by other conferences in the NCAA legislative pipeline - eliminating media guides and regional meets for men's and women's track and field.
Two of the initiatives did not gain support - eliminating foreign tours for sports teams and non-traditional sports seasons (fall baseball, as an example).
"Regarding the foreign tours, the Board is concerned that as college presidents and chancellors, their jobs are to create opportunities for students to study abroad and that eliminating foreign tours for student-athletes is inconsistent with providing all students a valuable educational experience that comes with exposure to foreign countries," Big 12 Commissioner Dan Beebe said.
Among the changes that the Mountain West Conference proposed was an eight-team playoff system in order to increase access to the national championship for the five conferences that don't automatically qualify their champions for the Bowl Championship Series title game. The Big 12 joined the BCS presidents and the other five BCS conferences with automatic qualification in rejecting the MWC plan for the next cycle of games.
The BCS contract with FOX Sports expires in 2010, but last fall the BCS negotiated a new agreement with ESPN that runs through 2014. The next negotiation cycle for the BCS isn't likely to occur until 2012 at the earliest.
"The full board ratified the position of the athletic directors at the spring meetings that we signed a (BCS) agreement and we intend to honor that agreement," Beebe said. "Certainly any conference can propose changes to the system prior to any further extensions of the BCS, but the opportunity to do that for the agreements that we negotiated and signed last fall was prior to the negotiations."
Big 12 faculty athletic representatives presented a promising report regarding the conference's Academic Progress Rate.
"It was a terrific, detailed report and there was evidence of improvement by member schools in all areas regarding the APR," Beebe said. "Nonetheless, we are not satisfied and their will be persistant study and effort to continue improvement."
The board of directors also approved minor NCAA legislation proposed by the Big 12, plus the conference budget for the 2009-10 season.